A father told an inquest that a doctor administered a fatal drug overdose to his 11-month-old daughter by hand despite "protests" from a nurse that she didn't need the medication, which is normally administered by an electric pump.

Her father, Gareth Burgess, said at the first day of the inquest into Sophie's death, held at Woking Coroner's Court on Monday (June 19), that the doctors had overruled the nurse's objections to administering phenytoin, an anti-seizure drug.

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The 11-month-old had suffered a series of seizures, which occurred as a reaction to infections, during the last two months of her life.

Mr Burgess told the hearing that Dr Lojein Hatahet and paediatric consultant Dr Fiona MacCarthy had attempted to administer the drug using an automated syringe-driver.

He said that when this failed to work they decided that Dr Hatahet would administer it from a handheld syringe against the protests of Nurse Polly Leavold who had said the drug was not needed and giving it by hand was against the hospital's protocol.

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He said: "It seems to me she had proper concerns and wanted to flag those and those concerns weren't taken on, she seemed very concerned.

"Both doctors heard what she was saying but she was overruled."

He added: "I was taken aback how dismissive and rude Dr Hatahet was towards Nurse Leavold."

Mr Burgess said that Sophie had not been suffering a seizure at that moment and was only "fatigued and grumpy" after coming out of a seizure an hour earlier and the doctors had not carried out any seizure status checks.

The drug needed to be administered over a 20 minute period but the family say this happened quicker than it should have, and that paperwork was later changed to show it had been injected over a 20 minute period as advised.

He said: "I was quite shocked, it was going fast, I was starting to get concerned."